Migration, a modular and adjustable oil lamp.

How did Lichen start?

Before Lichen, back in 2003, I was involved with designing and building a house. I worked on it for about 3 years, and I got really tired of beating my body up. I’d always wanted to do jewelry, so I started out doing jewelry. I wanted to do something that was much smaller than an entire 5,000 square foot house!

My first products were magnetic jewelry made from PaperStone. It ended up being really complicated, so I went on to doing a different kind of magnetic jewelry that was reconfigurable. It’s called Stix + Stones, and it started selling pretty well.

I always wanted to work with felt, and when I started the company I finally got a chance to started to playing with it, which led to designing more jewelry and a few housewares products. I want to try and stay within a sustainable realm. My passion is lighting, aside from doing fine art. So I designed the Squib, an LED pendant lamp. I’m working more towards furniture.

The Squib.

So you’re getting back into bigger things?

Eventually, but I think for a little while I’m going to stay within a certain size and complexity. It’s too much to get into complicated stuff without having a gigantic manufacturing company. I’m starting out small, but eventually I’ll be working back in furniture and lighting. I’ll be doing next year’s ICFF.

A lot of what I do is interactive, so the users need to see it in person and touch it and move it around. I didn’t really set out to do that – all of my designs just kind of turned out to be interactive.

What’s your studio like?

For the past two and a half years, which is how long the company’s been in business, I’ve worked out of the house that I was building. It’s been a great studio, a big open space, but now I’m actually transitioning down to LA. It’ll be a slow transition over the next two years, but I’m going to be down there a lot.

The house, where I’ve been, is on Bainbridge Island. It’s a beautiful place and I love it, but it’s a little isolated. I hardly ever even go into Seattle. I come to New York twice a year to do this show, and that’s the only networking, in-person time that I get in. I’m realizing that it’s not enough. I think I need to get out there more. This show has been great because I’ve been meeting a lot of people from LA that have great resources – factories, materials, etc.

EweCUFF felt bracelet.

What kind of stores are you selling to?

Museum stores, mostly. Design stores, furniture and housewares stores, too. For the jewelry there’s a few fashion stores, but it’s mostly museum stores that carry everything.

What has been the hardest part about setting your business up?

Probably the marketing, and lack of beginning funds. But it’s kind of coming together now. You work constantly. The amount of marketing involved is just amazing. I knew it was going to be really hard, and I told myself it was probably going to be much harder than that, and it ended up being even harder than that! [Laughs.]

Also, it’s hard to predict what will sell. What I really think is great, what’s my aesthetic, isn’t necessarily what sells. I learned that early on. If you’re a really big name, and you already have a following, then you can drive it. So hopefully I can really get back into doing exactly what I want. I’m having fun now, and all of the products are really good, but they’re not my real passion. I have so many ideas, but to get the material at a good price I have to order a lot, which limits what I can do.

Do you have any advice for people who want to set up a studio?

Start out simple, with low overhead, and a good profit margin on what you’re doing.

EweTUBE felt vase.

Zoe in the TOUCH gallery.

When did you start TOUCH?

TOUCH is super new – a year and a half ago, or less. But I’ve been a product development consultant for many years. I used to be the director of design development for Artecnica. I worked on all those projects. It got to a certain point, though, where I couldn’t be in a corporate environment. I like my freedom.

I began consulting, as well as working with social organizations. I started combining designers with social organizations.

How does TOUCH help the designers you work with?

Some we represent because they can’t produce their designs by themselves. Some, they can produce but they’re not ready yet to hit the market themselves, because it’s a big step. So I’ll take care of that for them. And others, they don’t want to deal with it, because the product is too expensive, so I’ll take it in to a different manufacturer and I do it. We go through the whole manufacturing and packaging thing, and then some of the products become TOUCH’s products.

The TOUCH gallery [image via Dwell]

TOUCH is also a gallery, right?

Yes, my partner Peter Scherrer and I got a space, which we called TOUCH. I looked at the whole space I thought, “OK, we can do dinners, talks, exhibitions…” But I didn’t want it to be like a gallery where every two months we have to have a new show, even if we haven’t found something good.

Every time I find products, or projects, or some sort of interesting thing related to product design, we do it in our space. Like when I saw InDisposed, I said, “You know, let’s take it to LA.” But most of the time it works as a showroom, as a studio, one part where we do consulting and the other part where we do branding. Peter runs Studio Mousetrap where he does branding and PR.

What interests you about product development?

Design is going through a very strange moment, a shift now. We had the moment of the products that were inflated, or the products being more conceptual, all of that. I think now, you can’t detach yourself from the production. The process. You need to keep yourself very close to how things are made – understand that world. That’s the world I’ve always understood, because the designer passes on to me and I actually go and working with the artisans.

I come from Brazil, where we work a lot with artisans. There is always someone who makes your product. At the same time, I don’t like to use that too much as a marketing tool. Yes, there is a story to how things are made, but I believe that the design has to be good. This is not charity, it’s business.

The Alada line in Touch’s booth at the gift fair.

How do you choose who to work with?

I think it’s about the energy, always, that we are all on the same page. We care about the environment – we’re thinking about it, at least. We’re learning, because we don’t know everything. We’re learning that we need to pay attention, but at the same time, we’re in a super conflicting moment. Do we really need to buy anything? And then we all make products! But what are we going to do with all this trash that is around us?

We come from this culture. We cannot just stop completely and say, “We are all going to go be hippies on a farm!” That’s not the solution either. The world cannot just collapse from one day to the next.

So slowly, more and more designers wanted to work with me and more towards what TOUCH is about. I think there is a good energy and there is a good approach. We’re super strict about the materials that we use and the designers that we work with. We’re creating a kind of a collaborative.

What brought you to the gift fair?

TOUCH has been growing, and suddenly I thought, “Wait a minute, there are all these products, I have to start selling them.” I’m very happy to be here at the show, because we’re doing well! I feel like the economy is picking up and people are more positive. It’s been interesting to see which designs people pick up. Different stores like different things. It’s been great to see how many people are interested in sustainable objects.

Rolha candelabra, made from cork and aluminum.

Do you have any advice for designers and creative people who want to start doing their own projects?

Just keep doing it. I think discipline is super important. The designers that really make it have an amazing amount of discipline. Self-promotion is also very important, being good at self-promoting doesn’t necessarily you are a really good designer. It’s important that you have that, but the integrity of what you do and the quality of the work will pay off more.

And do the shows. Go to all of the shows possible. Go to Milan, 100% Design… I think you have to do that to create your network. You need to be in front of the people and learn what they think about your product. Make all the mistakes. Put your work out there. I think that whole process makes you a great designer, if you are talented and have a good idea!

I adore the Drop piggybank.

Scott Ballum of Sheepless Co.

We’ve found, with a lot of the people that we interview, that the companies they start fulfill many of their needs beyond the financial. Social needs, creative needs… Your job should fulfill all of those other needs. It’s your life’s work – it’s what you’re doing every day.

But most people don’t enjoy what they do every day. It’s surprising to me! Even when I was working for someone else, it was still at a design company. And a graphic design practice is still going to be more enjoyable than so many other jobs that are out there. I was still using this artistic skill that I wanted to use.

Since I’ve been working here at Green Spaces, and on a couple of other projects that I’ve done, I’ve met a lot of people who basically are finding ways to support themselves – but it’s around some issue, or some mission, that they feel really passionate about. Not just because, “I want to make money.” I find that really inspiring. I think a lot of people wish that they could do that, but they don’t think it’s possible.

Graphic design for the Art Director’s Club

That’s definitely similar to what we’re trying to do on our site, which is promoting creative entrepreneurs who are creating their own path and making a living doing it.

I’m specifically interested in “activist entrepreneurs.” I want to show the relationship between really political street activists who band together and sell their posters online to make money, and, say, Seventh Generation. Which is a big cleaning products company, but they’re also based around social and environmental issues. i want to create this new way of thinking about business.

What I’m hoping to do is provide a voice, a way for those people who are doing it to branch out and tell others, “Yes, this kind of career is possible.” You can leave your horrible middle-management job, or whatever it is, and do something that you’re excited about.

It will start as an online magazine. I hope to, at least quarterly or bi-annually, do printed versions as well. I think there’s a place for that – people want it. You can hold it, you can take it places, you can show it to people. But it’s a lot easier, and faster, and cheaper, to build an audience online. As I’m sure you know!

Graphic design for the Art Director’s Club

Absolutely, the internet makes finding an audience so much easier. What is your background?

I’ve always wanted to be independent. When I came out of school, where I studied graphic design, I passed up a couple of jobs because they just seemed like they were too focused on one particular type of design. Or one particular industry. I wanted something that was broader. I ended up freelancing by default, because I kept turning down jobs!

Then I actually fell into a couple of jobs that were pretty fantastic. I worked in-house at Housing Works, and then I got a job with C&G partners. I would be working with design legends, and it was the kind of job you just don’t turn down when it’s offered. I liked, when I was there, that they had a very broad range of clients. I was taken in as senior personnel and I was able to run my own projects. But even then, I still had to report to someone else. There was still someone else who was deciding the direction of the company.

Also, I have a background in writing, and I was finding more and more venues to do that write. But I had to squeeze it into after-hours and weekends. I wanted to find a way to make that a really solid part of what I did. I decided to go out on my own and turn it into some sort of a business.

Graphic design for the Signature Theatre Company

How did you end up a part of Green Spaces?

I left the company I was working for in September. Great timing. I had projects all lined up, and I thought I was totally set. Well, the big projects all disappeared when the economy crashed. There were a few months of serious drought there. During that time, I was working in coffee shops.

I would tell myself that the people who worked in the coffee shop were my “co-workers” and if I was late they were going to know! I really had to convince myself of that – there had to be some way to get myself out of the apartment. I had to go somewhere else and say, “OK, this is work time.”

In February or March of this year, I started getting a few phone calls, and projects started coming up. Doing design work and writing in the coffee shop environment was a lot harder than sitting there looking for work. I started thinking I should find some other space – not having any idea yet how I would ever afford it. In that same coffee shop, people from this building had put up a flier with little take-away tabs with their phone number, saying, “Co-working office space.” I decided to just take a look.

Graphic design for Housing Works

Why not?

Exactly, why not? It sounded like fun, and I figured I’d meet some more people. When I got here, I loved the building. It’s so alive, and there are so many different people here doing so many different kinds of things. And yet we all have a very socially-conscious, environmentally-conscious mission to whatever we’re doing. We’re not competition – we’re all very supportive of each other. It seemed like a great thing to try, so I tried it, and I loved it.

As your own small company, you could just sit at home or in your little office and be really isolated. Places like Green Spaces let you be autonomous and let you do what it is that you want to do, and yet still share resources and share inspiration.

Could you tell us what your mission is at this point? What kind of projects are you doing?

For the design practice, I aim to work with small, socially-responsible businesses or non-profits – cultural organizations, things like that. I’m trying to work on projects that I can really get behind and support. It’s not easy, because that’s definitely not a niche where there’s a lot of money. It means that I have to take on more projects. But they’re much more rewarding. Even if I have to put in long nights, I’d rather do it for something I feel good about and am excited about.

On the Crop To Cup site, you can learn about the farmers who grew your coffee.

What is the goal of Crop To Cup?

Our goal is to develop a model where the farmer is connected to the coffee drinker. We want to do that both socially and financially. Socially, we introduce them on these cards, and you can go on our website and check out their videos, meet their families, explore the communities. You can email the farmers, if you want. It goes through a lot of intermediaries, to get an email to a mountain where they probably don’t even have cell phone reception, but it’s possible!

And then financially, which is probably what the farmers care about most, we connect the farmers to the actual selling price of the coffee here. We don’t just pay a good price on the mountain for the actual product, when we export it. Farmers get a stake in the selling price here. So if we sell $100 worth of coffee, $5 goes back to the farmers. 5% of every sale. That means the farmers have an incentive to produce a good coffee that will sell for a higher price here in the states.

Did you guys start out with a business plan?

We thought we knew what we were going to do, so we planned it out. But it didn’t end up going that way. We ended up using part of the business plan, but pretty much didn’t look at it after about a week or so!

So how did it all start?

I would say we started in Uganda, which is were we get most of our coffee from right now. My now-business-partner and I were in Uganda working for non-profits. We had met at a study abroad program in Switzerland, working with a lot of NGOs. Just by chance, we managed to get down to Uganda to work for one of those NGOs in a research capacity. We found a lot of work there and went back after university. We actually started an NGO there, not related to coffee at all, but were working alongside another NGO that was exporting coffee.

We started working for this exporter. We weren’t in coffee before, but we figured, “Why not?” We just fell into it, really. Those were the same farmers that we work with now. There are about 600 small family farmers that contribute to this. We left that company and went our own ways for about 2 years, all the while sort of trying to plan out our own company.

When did you take the plunge and start working for yourselves?

Two years ago. We thought we going to launch with, you know, a half a million dollar investment. We met with an investor, went through discussions, popped a bottle of champagne. It was awesome! We thought, “Somebody’s going to give two young kids, who don’t even know how to make a balance sheet, half a million dollars?” Obviously he was smarter than us and in the end it didn’t go through.

But we’d planned for this company, we were ready to go with it. So we just started. We just did it with our own money and a few investments here and there from friends and family. And just grew really slowly. We’re still tiny – we have four people, two here in New York and two in Chicago. We wholesale to restaurants, cafes, flea markets, CSAs, and we sell online. We have mainly Ugandan coffee, but we also work with another importer from other origins, like a decaf from Mexico, and some Sumatran coffee for our espresso blend.

How have you gotten the word out about your company?

Just hitting the streets, really. I started at flea markets, and met some wholesale clients there. I’d stop into cafes and drop off samples. We were in Daily Candy. We’ve held events here at Green Spaces, and we’ve becoming involved in the New York Coffee Society. Things like that – it’s been pretty organic.

How did you get hooked up with Green Spaces?

Craigslist. I was working in a storage shed a block from my house in Harlem and I was looking for a shared office space.

It’s a good group here. We share a lot of prospects with Sea To Table. Anna Lappe is here, and she writes about food sustainability. There’s cupcakes and granola being made, and they’re at the flea market with us. I feel like in most shared office spaces, everybody has their desk and everybody’s doing completely different things with very little crossover. Here, there’s a lot of convergence. I’m a big proponent of Green Spaces.

Green Spaces is a communal workspace where, for as little as $250 a month, you can get access to a space to work in and be in the company of about 30 other like-minded entrepreneurs. Sure beats working alone in your bedroom!

Can you describe what Green Spaces is all about?

We’re really trying to help green companies get off the ground without a lot of overhead. When you’re here, you’re in this community. It’s scary starting a company, but we’re all here going through the same thing. It makes it easier.

A desk in the space is $475 a month. Access to the more informal lounge space is $250 a month. It’s got chairs, couches, and you can come in and sit wherever you want, and plug your laptop in. WIth both the desks and the lounge, you get 24/7 access, interns, a conference room to hold meetings, and can throw events here. Plus have lunch together Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. We call it our Socialist Lunch Program!

And it always smells like granola, which makes the whole space a little nicer. There’s a big movement in Brooklyn with food startups, and a huge need for commercial kitchen space. For now, we have a granola company and a cupcake company working in our kitchen. And Crop to Cup keeps us all supplied with coffee.

How did you become interested in green businesses?

I used to work in finance, but I’ve always been interested in the environment. Then a couple of years ago I started Green Leaders with my friend Marissa Feinberg – an organization that brought together people who were either change agents, or part of a larger organization and trying to make it more sustainable. It was an intimate forum that brought people together. We did cocktail hours, brought in speakers, and did a short screening of a documentary at the Soho house.

A lot of the people involved were small, green start-ups that didn’t have access to workspace.

Finding affordable space is one of the hardest things for startups.

Exactly. I was consulting for these startups and having meetings at coffee shops! You have so may needs as a startup company, and one of the hardest things is that you have to figure everything out all by yourself. I thought it would be really awesome if we could all just work together, share ideas, and hopefully become stronger by being together.

Once you set up here, how did you find enough startups to fill the place?

When I first open the doors I didn’t realize how hard it was going to be. I had one client. Every day I would set my alarm, come to work, walk in, see my one client, and make coffee. Then I’d just sit here not knowing what to do. So I started doing basic stuff, like I printed postcards and passed them around.

Coming from a career finance, I would think, “Is this really what I should be spending my day doing?” But it was. And posting on Craigslist was critical. I also had open houses and invited people here.

You’ve obviously come along way since then!

We have 30 companies now. A lot of them are one to two person start-ups, both for- and non-profit. This is a mixed used space. The companies that are based here do a very wide range of things. For example, Scott Ballum runs a company called Sheepless Co., does graphics for local firms here in Brooklyn, and is starting an online magazine covering sustainable business. John Hodges has a carbon trading company, and he works with large land managers around the country to develop carbon projects. Anna Lappe is a pretty well-known author whose latest book is on climate change.

This is way too much for just one person to run – how did you go about bringing other people in?

It wasn’t even a two person job in the beginning. Then, a few months into it other people became involved. Roberto Rhett started as an intern, liked it, and became really instrumental in the development. He’s taken over running the Brooklyn space, so I can have the freedom to go to Denver and look at space there. Then Brad Holmes came on and launched our green business competition, which we’ll also be taking to other cities. He also launched our internship program and workshops.

How else are you looking to expand Green Spaces?

I want to connect with green start-ups in other places. New York feels a bit like a small community now. One of our interns moved out to Denver, and said a lot is happening. I’m going out there for the month of July, and if it seems like there really is an opportunity, then I’m planning on staying longer and setting up a second Green Spaces. Denver feels like a new emerging marketplace.

Would there be an opportunity for residents to go between the cities?

We’d like to do that. If companies here want to expand, and do business in Denver, they can just go and work from there. If you’re part of Green Spaces NY, you’re part of Green Spaces Denver. We want to start to create smaller communities that are connected. It’s a huge idea, and I’m excited to see what happens.

Stay tuned next week as we post interviews with some of the startups based at Green Spaces!

Way back in December we were approached by curators Dan Rubinstein and Jen Renzi to participate in their ICFF offsite show, InDisposed. At that point the show seemed so far in the future, but lo and behold, we set up tomorrow!

The brief they put together is amazing. In their own words:

As environmentalism has infiltrated contemporary design, durability and longevity have become the buzzwords du jour… rejecting throwaway culture to prioritize permanence over the ephemeral—while trashing the very idea of disposability. That’s our loss. After all, are disposable objects inherently bad? Doesn’t disposability have some redeeming social value?

Provocative, to say the least. InDisposed will be on display at Studio X May 15-20, 10-6PM (closed Sunday).

Can you give us a sneak preview of some of the work on display?

Jen: We invited a lot of furniture designers, but people really surprised us by coming up with small objects. Though as we’ve moved along, bigger and bigger objects have come up that will create their own installation challenges.

Candlestrip by Design Glut for InDisposed (Photo by Ben Ritter)

Dan: Tobias Wong will be showing. He approached Paper magazine, and said, “Let me dispose of ten pages of your magazine, guest-edit them, and then put them online.” In the magazine it will jump from pages 150 to 160, or so, and say something to the effect of, “You are about to skip 10 pages of the magazine. They are being disposed of for eco-purposes, they are exclusively available online, and this is for the InDisposed show.”

Jen: It’s funny, because as a conceptual designer, Toby has conflicting ideas of authorship and responsibility. He almost wanted to unmake something that was already there. His medium is anti-medium.

Are there any trends across the work?

Jen: We actually have a lot of people using food and edibles. Which I guess makes sense, because its such a natural cycle of disposibility that’s easy to embrace. Jeff Miller, for example, is working with City Bakery, and molding old bread into birdhouses. Carlos Salgado is making planters out of used coffee grounds.

Dan: Andrea Ruggiero is doing plates made from birdseed and a super-secret potato starch mix that looks like ceramic. The idea is that you can eat off it, and when you’re done, you can throw it like a frisbee into the woods. It will naturally dissolve, and the birds can peck at the seeds. Then we have Takeshi Miyakawa, who is making molded plastic take-out containers. They look similar to lego blocks, and can be washed after use, and made into different things.

Jen: It’s provocative because it encourages you to use take-out containers. It encourages you to consume, then turn the waste into something functional.

Suzanne Tick for InDisposed

It sounds like an amazing variety of pieces.

Jen: It is all so different. In the end, it’s a lot of designers, taking spare time out of commercially viable work to do these intellectual indulgences for us. I hope a lot of people come out. The show will be up for a week, so come out and take a look around.

How did you think up the idea for the show?

Jen: We actually started last year. We wanted to do something for ICFF, but it was too late to pull it off, so we used the extra time to plan out this year. We knew we wanted to do a show, something conceptual.

Dan: We wanted to do something that was timely and not so commercial. We knew since we didn’t really have a budget, we didn’t have to do a lot of what we saw at ICFF – new pieces being shown at some fancy boutique, limited in terms of the risks they take.

Jen: We weren’t sure if we were even going to be able to get a space. We had this idea that if we couldn’t find the gallery we wanted, we’d do it a little guerilla-style. Have a one-night happening at a bar. Instead of saying, “Are we going to be able to get a space?” We worked backwards and said, “Well, if we don’t have space, what are we going to do?”

Paul Loebach for InDisposed

How did you end up getting together with Studio X?

Dan: We contacted the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. They produce a lot of really cool events, find work spaces for artists and designers, and do lots of fancy things to boost this area culturally post-9/11. We told them we were doing a design show with mostly local talent, and asked if they knew a space someone would be wiling to donate. They told us about Studio X, and we went from there.

What exactly is Studio X?

Gavin: This is a satellite of the Columbia University which acts as an interface between the design school and the public. It’s also a space for research, exhibition, and experimental programming. The idea is that it can be a space for research, and work, then very quickly transform into an event space and back again. No one has shelves, all the desks are on wheels, and everything is mobile.

Sounds perfect. ICFF is an expensive show, which makes people nervous when it comes to taking risks.

Jen: Exactly. A lot of people complain, but it’s a trade show. I kind of wish someone would do an offsite show, of commercially viable products, for people that are just starting out. ICFF can be very daunting. I talk to a lot of designers, even those midway through there career, and they still have a hard-time with ICFF. They would need to get certain things out of it to make it worth the money, and thus they don’t do it. I also feel like the offsite shows are shrinking as people got further in their careers.

It seems like this year may be the year for offsite shows.

Dan: Since the economy has ground to a halt, you would think this would spur super-creative things by people who have no commercial interests. But instead, I have a feeling it’s going to be a lot of hum-drum showrooms, with everyone playing it safe. In all these other places in the world, people are doing incredible design for design’s sake.

Jen: Well, in those places the government funds design. You can’t really compare apples to oranges. We’re just creating a space where people can do something that’s not ICFF-ish.

Situ Studio for InDisposed

Shake-a-leg salt and pepper shakers

How did Perch start? Did you know you were starting a company? You had a ceramics background, right?

Yeah, I have an undergrad in art, and I did some ceramics there. But I was specifically not into the sort of handmade quality of just throwing pots and hand-building, so I was really turned off from that. And so I spent the next couple years doing furniture, which led me to go to Pratt, to study furniture. So I thought I was going to be doing furniture. But everybody thinks they’re going to be doing furniture!

It’s so true!

It’s the dream, you know, which doesn’t really work very well in reality. But I took a slipcasting class there, and it was kind of like, “Oh, OK, this is ceramics but in a way that I can understand it.” It’s just so much cleaner, and you can have mass-produced stuff. I think I kind of always wanted to be involved in something more mass-produced, rather than just being an artist.

I’ve always been a little entrepreneurial, so I figured at some point it would lead to something. I worked for David Weeks for a long time. And so while I was working for him, I had a studio and I just started making stuff. I named my studio “Perch” because I still thought I was going to do furniture.

Basket bowl

Right – like things you would perch on.

Exactly. I really liked stools, and I had also made a birdfeeder, and I needed a name. Perch kind of covered a couple different things. It just kind of started… I just started selling things. I guess it happened pretty naturally. But I can’t say that I just stumbled into it. I did want to find something that I could make a business out of.

What has been the hardest part to learn about design as a business?

I’ve kind of focused my work to be things that wouldn’t be mass-produced on a bigger level. One of the problems is keeping a distinction between my stuff and other ceramic objects. You can obviously go to IKEA or West Elm and get nicely designed ceramics. The production processes of my pieces doesn’t lend them to full-on mass production. Sometimes they have a handmade quality, or sometimes it’s just the way things are fired. Those are subtleties that maybe only other industrial designers would notice.

Sometimes it’s tempting to just do something really simple, but there’s almost no point. I’d have to sell that vase for $70 or something, and you could buy almost the same thing for much, much less at one of the big stores.

Petite tray tray

Could you talk a little bit about sustainability and local production?

That’s the other challenge. I sort of fell into that naturally as well. The eco-friendly thing happened more because I don’t want to work around toxic materials. I knew that if this was going to be a life-long thing, the materials had to be something that I felt comfortable working with every day.

And while I definitely feel passionately about having things made locally, that’s also just the way it naturally happened. At one point I sourced some things out – they were being manufactured elsewhere in the US, and I just thought the quality was awful. My stores actually would not take the pieces that they made, and said, “We like the ones that you make better.” So that was a big decision, to decide, “Alright, If I’m going to do this, apparently I’M doing it.”

That’s what you offer as a company, if you’re doing it yourself – better quality than everyone else.

Exactly. It just looks different. It doesn’t look like a mug made in China.

Plantorb planter

There’s definitely a common language between all of your pieces. It’s kind of whimsical, but it’s also kind of minimalist and modern.

I think there’s something about shapes sort of relating to people in a way. Maybe this is something that’s grown out of experience, a little bit, but I feel like with a lot of my things people just really like the shape. And they kind of want it. It’s kind of an emotional thing. Maybe a shape somehow, when you see it, feels familiar and comfortable. It just sort of speaks to you on a level that you sort of want it in your life or something. That’s my goal; that’s what I try to do.

Speaking of goals, what else would you like to happen with Perch?

Obviously, since the economy is what it is, it has been sort of a creative time business-wise to really re-evaluate everything. It’s nice to be able to go back to the studio and figure out what is going to be of more value to somebody at this point. We’ve found that the higher-end stuff is selling more right now, which is very good.

One of my goals – I’ve been wanting to do a lot of tile stuff. I just got this big job doing tiles for a client, and that’s been something I’ve always wanted to try.

Rabbit pitcher

How do you deal with pricing your work? Has that been a hard thing?

It’s really hard. I feel like one of the reasons that I was successful in the first couple years is because I priced my stuff reasonably. I tend to think that the perfect price for something is probably halfway between wholesale and retail. You have to take a little bit less than you think you should get, and the stores have to be able to charge a little bit more. So it feels like an expensive item when somebody’s buying it, and it also feels like, “Oh, I can’t believe I’m only making that much for that piece.” Right in the middle would be perfect, but both you and the customer have to bend a little.

How have you built up your store network?

Mostly from the trade shows. I just do the New York Gift Show, that’s it. And word of mouth – blogs, the internet, people just write to me and say that they’ve seen something. That’s becoming bigger and bigger. I get more sales now, I think, from online word-of-mouth than even at the trade shows. But the necessary evil that we’ve realized is you have to be there. If you’re not there you kind of fall off the grid.

Any advice for other entrepreneurs?

I would say don’t get discouraged about this time, in the market. It is actually good, because people are really thinking about what they’re purchasing and people are starting to appreciate good design. They’re going to understand paying a little bit more for something that is made here, or something that is just a higher quality object in whatever way. So be patient and be smart about your designs. Try to think about adding value.

A container for one thing

Bilge Lounge, made from reclaimed bourbon barrel staves and truck springs.

Could you talk a little about the Uhuru philosophy? It’s very rooted in our local culture.

D: Our big concern is with sustainability, and building local. It’s what we’re known for. We’re interested in finding out what goes on in this area, and then finding reusable waste products. For the past 3 years, we’ve been finding new types of products that we can use. It started with scrap wood. Bill, one of the founders, had worked for a couple of shops beforehand, so we started out collecting from them. Then we reached out to some bigger companies. The challenge is to try to find a material that won’t run out.

What other upcycled materials are you using?

D: Jason, the other founder, is from Kentucky, and so he’d always wanted to do something with bourbon barrels. The key to upcycling is taking a waste material and making it into something that’s really nice. With our Küpe line, you can still see it’s a barrel, but it’s also taken very far out of that context. Bill was actually just out at a place looking at old beams, which is a material we’re starting to use a lot of.

Beam Coffee Table

B: Yeah, some of the beams are made of yellow hard pine, original growth, which is from when the forests were really dense in the Northeast. It was over-logged and it’s hard to find these days. The growth rings are super tight, because the trees were all fighting for light. It’s a really, really nice material.

D: We found a beam on the street one time, and that’s how it all started. And then we had to find a source for that again, because we obviously couldn’t just count on taking stuff off the street.

Can you tell us about any new projects?

B: We’re doing some chairs that we’re going to launch at Brooklyn Designs in May. It’s an interesting story. There’s a place called “Build It Green” in Long Island City. It’s an architectural salvage place, and they have everything from tubs, refrigerators, doors, chairs… We bought sixteen of these chair parts, basically the back of a chair including the back legs. They were from a chair factory in Long Island City that went out of business. We’re building a front part to the chairs that’s going to be more modern.

How did Uhuru start?

B: Jason and I basically started with $1,000 in our pocket. Our friend’s dad, who used to have a cabinet shop, gave us a bunch of tools. We wouldn’t have been able to do it without that. Below where I was living, this girl needed to sublet her extra space out. We told her we needed somewhere to set up all our tools, and she said OK. I don’t know how she dealt with it, though. We were in there grinding metal in the middle of the night! Jason was still working at an interior design firm, so we worked on our own stuff whenever we could, all kinds of odd hours.

Chime Mirror, made from reclaimed bourbon barrels.

D: As it started growing, and they had a little bit more money, they did Brooklyn Designs. That’s when they really launched their product. I started working here right after that. At that point, there were four of us, only three full-time, and it was still pretty slow. I could see the progression after that summer. It was probably a six-month time period where you really started seeing stuff from the show starting to sell.

B: Originally our work was just custom stuff for interior designers. Brooklyn Designs really pushed us to get our own work together. We signed up for it, had our projects that we’d designed along the way, and then sort of filled that out and turned it into our first line.

Bill Hilgendorf and Jason Horvath

Were you under the name Uhuru already?

B: Yeah, we were. That was from the beginning. Our vision was always there, it just took a while to actually come up with a line of furniture. But every year, that show has been a great push for us to come out with new stuff. That’s usually when we launch stuff, in May, between Brooklyn Designs and ICFF and all the other events that go on.

Do you guys sell through showrooms?

B: We do. There’s a place in TriBeCa that we sell through, called Room. And we also have a showroom in LA. While it’s good to be able to say that we have these showrooms that represent us, it’s easier in terms of pricing for us to sell directly. Wholesale pricing is hard, especially for high-end pieces which people aren’t going to buy ten of. Selling through the trade has been the best for us, through architects and interior designers.

How do your customers find you?

D: People find us on blogs. Magazines. Sometimes you have to go out and try to sell yourself, as well. But most of it’s just been word-of-mouth and through publications. One of the nice things about doing shows is that interior designers come out from lots of different places.

How have you learned the business side, coming out of art school?

B: The year after I graduated from RISD, I worked for the guy who was just starting out for himself. I was his first employee ever. That was like a crash course in business. I got a real sense, from watching him, of how to deal with clients and where to get materials. And I did an internship, the summer of my junior year, for this guy who did custom furniture. I learned a lot from him; he was a one-man operation.

Stoolen, made from local scrap wood, optional bicycle rim.

D: You kind of learn a lot as you go on. You talk to people that are in the business.

B: I’ve been teaching myself QuickBooks; that’s been huge. I don’t know how I survived without it. And American Express! Big time help. The 30-day loan. In most of the work we do, we’ll get a deposit, but we don’t get a large amount of money until the end. Other than that… The Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce has actually been pretty cool. They have seminars all the time, dealing with different topics like employees and health insurance.

D: For me, learning how to run a business has kind of been one of the fun parts.

B: As long as it doesn’t destroy you! But I have no regrets, even though it’s been incredibly difficult, and there’s 80-hour, 90-hour weeks, and craziness, it’s definitely worth it. I’d much rather be doing this than anything else.

Your company is strongly rooted in an ethical philosophy. Could you tell us a little bit about that?

The company was co-founded by myself and my sister, Teresita. Having grown up with the same people, our parents, we naturally brought the ethics we were raised with into our lives and our business. Our father was a Peace Corps volunteer. And prior to that, he studied architecture, so he has a design background which came out in our upbringing. Our mom grew up in India, where you inherently learn how to live close to the earth. In India, versus the United States, you don’t have the luxury of being hidden from how you use things and where those things go.

I think the ethics of how humans make things and do things is drastically changing. Designing that change is where we see SMIT fitting into the big picture.

Do you think that starting a business is a good way to express a moral philosophy? I think that’s a pretty new idea.

At SMIT, we design and make things for humans and their environment. The products that we choose to design at SMIT and bring into the world are because we believe in their ability to lessen our (humans’) impact on the earth’s resources in an accountable way.

Our moral philosophy comes out in how we design and the choices we make in that design process. When it comes to starting a business, it has to make money. That’s the agreed system in which we all do business. Our customers value not only our products’ physical design and functions, but also the fact that the product itself has integrity and a sustainable relationship to the world. And as long as people choose to buy the products, then the business and the moral philosophy can both work.

You’ve shown your work at ICFF and at MoMA. Those must have been two big turning points for you! How did those shows happen?

When I was graduating from Pratt, my sister was also graduating from NYU’s ITP program. She and I were kind of taking similar paths. I was creating a product, GROW, while she was creating a business, SMIT. Her business plan incorporated some ideas that I was really interested in, in terms of starting a business and entrepreneurship, and my product fit well with the business plan.

When I was a senior, I showed my project to the committee who was choosing what was going to be shown at ICFF in the Pratt Booth. It was chosen for the show, and that was a big turning point. ICFF opened the door to a much broader audience. I walked away from ICFF with probably 200 business cards in my pocket, and a number of different architects who said, “When this is real, let me know. I want this for a building.”

It was great timing for my sister and I. Deb was gathering people for the Pratt Design Incubator. She looked at us, and at this product, and said, “Do you have a business plan? Do you want to be in the Incubator?” I didn’t have a business plan! But, my sister was right there and she did. We had a meeting a week later and were accepted into the Incubator. Then began the process of starting SMIT, Sustainably Minded Interactive Technology, LLC.

And MoMA?

The MoMA show was another big turning point and they actually found us. You know, one doesn’t exactly go after, “How do you get into a MoMA show?” and expect anything to come from it. It’s something I had written off as an impossible thing. After ICFF we went about developing GROW. One of the first things we needed to do was raise some development money. We got a grant, and with that, we agreed to create a blog in order to keep everyone up-to-date on our progress.

Someone working at MoMA stumbled onto the blog. They wanted to get in touch with us, but on the blog we didn’t provide a phone number or e-mail to avoid spam and what not. A persistent MoMA intern read through our entire blog and spotted our uncle’s name. She happened to have gone to Cornell and taken one of his courses! She emailed him, saying “I think I’m looking for your nephew and niece” And he says “Yeah, that’s them,” and forwards us the email. We literally freaked out. What, the MoMA is looking for us?!?

As it turned out, they wanted the GROW concept be a part of their catalog for an upcoming exhibit Design and the Elastic Mind. So we said, “Yeah! We’ll send you images, of course, whatever you need!” And ever-so-slyly also said, “We could make a prototype for the show, if you want to show it.” Not being pushy, but just slid that one under the door.

They deliberated on it, and they eventually said yes. We made an up-to-date prototype and installed it in Feb ‘08. It was a very exciting experience! I have always gone to and been inspired by the shows at the MoMA, and to be putting up a piece in one was truly an honor.

After the show we got some more good news. Paola and her team were considering our piece for the permanent collection. Again, we were overjoyed, but trying to be reserved about it. I think we said, “Oh! Really!? ” They eventually got back to us with a yes. So our piece from the show is now in the MoMA’s permanent collection. A little surreal, and very welcomed!

Did it lead to a lot more architects getting in touch?

Absolutely. GROW and Solar Ivy are products that are able to interact with many different typologies of architecture. So, naturally, architects and developers are interested. Most of the Architects from ICFF were in and around New York, or in the United States, with a good handful of companies from the rest of world. But after the Design and the Elastic Mind exhibition opened and its catalog released, our exposure went all over the world.

I also knew from the beginning that architects were going to be the first adopters of GROW. My sister and I brought on Benjamin Howes (Pratt Arch. 2006) as an equity partner in 2007. He’s a great thinker at many levels and can break down the most complex ideas into logical systems. Plus his last name is Howes, pronounced “house” and he’s an architect. What more could we ask for?

I’d like to back up to where you were talking about the grant that you got. I don’t think we’ve talked to anybody who’s taken that route. Was that part of your original plan? How did you make that happen?

GROW came from examining the relationship between humans’ built environment and how nature responds to it. When you build a building, plants will start growing on it. Things start to inhabit it that you don’t want to inhabit it. GROW’s concept was to harness energy in a similar way to what plants do, through a form of biomimicry. Ivy, for example, finds the side of the building where it will get the most sunlight. It creates its own footing. And it has this beautiful kinetic sculpture effect, as wind blows through it across the side of your building. This, in turn, presented a unique opportunity to harness both wind and solar energy.

We applied for the grant to prove out our technology and develop GROW into a product. Since w
e were in the Pratt design Incubator, we were able to utilize Pratt’s grant writers, who found the organization, NCIIA (National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance). NCIIA had an Advanced E-Team grant, which is set up to foster ideas from concepts into actual working prototypes. We used the grant to fund R&D for GROW as well as pay for legal fees involved with filing a utility patent, which we now have.

What’s next?

We recently hired David Rose as our capital campaign adviser. His background is in design innovation (he teaches at MIT’s media lab) and business creation. David has been great in helping us fine tuning our business plan and ushering us into this next round of developing SMIT. We have been pitching to some venture capital firms and angel investors. The process is kind of like finding a dance partner. Some people you find a rhythm with, while some you don’t. It has been a fun process as we have been learning a lot about how this works.

For the past year or so, we’ve been making alliances with emerging solar tech companies, universities, and manufacturing companies to help facilitate our designs. It’s also just really fun to see what others are up to. So, we continue to meet more people and work to move new ideas forward.

We are also going to be part of a few shows coming up. There is a show in Germany which is traveling from Hanover to Berlin in which we will be showing the GROW concept. There is another possible show in Paris later on in 2009. We also have the GROW concept in few book publications due out early ‘09. And, soon, look for a website update that’s happening as we speak: http://s-m-i-t.com

What led you to start your own business? That’s a huge leap.

Nikki: Yeah, Art school does not prepare you for that. Sam and I went to University of Florida together. And Jesse, one of the other designers that works here, was also with us there in the art department. We all kind of ended up here in Brooklyn and just started building furniture for our apartments.

Oh really? Is that how it started?

Sam: Jesse and I were doing really crappy renovation work. Taking down drywall, moving walls over and putting them back up, building lofts, and all of this back-breaking work. And we thought, wait a minute, we have all these tools, and we’ve been trained in sculpture. Let’s make some furniture. We made a bunch of stuff in his tiny basement with seven foot ceilings and then did the Brooklyn Designs show. That was our launch.

Nikki: We’d gone to the first Brooklyn Designs and just walked around. We thought, ” Wow, look at all these people doing what we want to do! We could totally do this.” Designing the furniture came first. And then we were like, “Oh, we need to incorporate, I think! There’s legal stuff that goes along with all this, if we sell anything.” So we incorporated, in 2004.

Sam: And that’s when Nikki quit bartending.

Nikki: Oh yeah, that was so nice.

Who did you start selling to?

Nikki: The Brooklyn Designs show is really kind of different from other shows, because you get people who are just walking through and want to buy furniture. Other shows cater a lot more to the trade and to press. Brooklyn Designs has a little bit of that too, but you’re face-to-face with a lot of clients. A lot of people tend to come in and say, “Oh, this is a great piece, you should make it do this and this and this.”

Did you do custom work?

Nikki: Yeah, we did a lot of custom work, and we still do a lot of custom work. It makes up a good amount of our sales. It’s also fun; it has these continuing challenges.

Sam: And it usually ends up creating some new product. It tells you, “Oh yeah, there’s a need for side tables,” or something.

Nikki: The Planar Storage line came from a custom solution. This guy needed storage for all of his media – cassettes, records, every kind of media under the sun. He didn’t want to get rid of them or transfer them to digital because he wanted to keep them for his kid.

Where would you like this to go? What’s your dream for it?

Sam: I think eventually we’ll be at the point where we can concentrate more on the design and the prototyping. We’d like to free ourselves up from managing the business all the time, and have time to be more creative.

Nikki: The day-to-day stuff really sucks you in. It’s hard to have the oversight and perspective you need to think about where you want the business to go, while you’re working on the day-to-day things.

Sam: It’s really nice, though, to have your hand in every single aspect of your business, from the start. You learn what it is that you want each part of your business to do, so that if you can eventually hire someone else, you can direct them well. You learn from the personal experience whether it is clamping up in the shop or writing the invoices or creating your legal documents. Nikki’s gotten good at QuickBooks!

Nikki: Yeah, and talk about a learning curve. It’s like I had to grow that part of my brain. I had to dig it out from somewhere. But organizing and setting up systems is super important.

Sam: And being a Jack-of-all-trades, too. We’ve been lucky to have someone in-house, Jesse, who’s done all of our web work and set up our online store. Which, you know, is a tricky thing. You have to get all your credit card processors and things set up, etc.

It’s a lot of headaches. But at the same time, I feel like through the internet, all of the stuff we’re talking about is actually possible. I don’t know how the hell anyone was an entrepreneur without the internet.

Sam: It’s nice because it allows you to look a little bigger than you are. Though sometimes we’re fighting between, “OK, is our presence online a really, really professional company? Are people expecting that type of service?” Or do we want them to know, “Hey, we’re a Mom-and-Pop, husband and wife team here.” So we almost have to downplay the professionalism, which is a weird balance to hit.

Yeah, that’s a really hard balance to hit. You can’t make everybody happy.

Nikki: Oh, and that was an issue we faced in setting our prices. We had to figure out how high-end we were going to be. We started out wanting ourselves, and people like us, to be able to afford to buy something from us. But then we realized, “No, because all we can afford is IKEA!” It was so hard to let go of, because we wanted all our friends to be able to buy from us. But you can’t compete with IKEA and manufacture the way that we do. Complicated joinery, and things like that, take time.

Sam: We’re making stuff in Brooklyn. We’re not going overseas. We’re doing it ourselves, by hand, in small batches. Everything is sustainable and high-quality. People can get behind that and if we can keep the price down low enough, then it will sell.

We just interviewed David Weeks and he made a comment about the low-end market kind of being covered by IKEA. It’s saturated and you can’t compete with that; you have to go higher end.

Sam: When the Tetrad shelving first came out, they really caught on, because they had the tech-y angle. (We called it Tetris shelving before we got the cease-and-desist notice and realized we had to change our name.) We had all of these kids seeing it in gaming magazines, and just ranting about the price. And not understanding where we were coming from. They just assumed that some multi-national corporation was making these.

Nikki: The first shelves we came out with were the Mega’s. They were an inch and a half thick, walnut and ash. Because when you’re a designer, you want to make the best possible thing.

Sam: The Mega’s are huge, luxury objects. We kept trying to make cheaper versions. We came up with some other styles that we really like, but we could never get it as cheap as people wanted. They were mad because they couldn’t own them. So all these separate people started making them themselves.

Nikki: They wanted it to be $10 to $15 a block. That’s impossible for us. At some point you just have to be like, “Well we designed this, we put it out into the world, now we’re going to let it go. It went up on Instructables, how to make a cheap version. Which is fine and kind of funny at the same time.

That’s a great story. It shows how you’re holding to your ethos of local production and sustainability. What’s next?

Nikki: We just came out with the Prism Stool. It can be used as a stool or an end table, and it’s made out of the scraps from the Tetrad Mega. Every bevel that’s c
ut on those leaves a scrap, and then we laminate them together to make this.

Sam: Imagine those long strips being bundled together and then sliced, with the legs being left long and tapered.

This makes so much sense for you guys, because you’ve got the material lying around. And from a sustainability perspective, it’s perfect.

Nikki: We were trying to do the same thing with the Coat Range. Whenever we would make a Brave Lounge Chair, we would have extra space on our cut sheets. So we made the first Coat Range prototype out of that. The only problem was that the Coat Ranges started selling so much faster than the Brave Lounges! Which kind of defeated the purpose, but what can you do?

Sam: Still, when you put a lot of Coat Ranges on a sheet, they nest together closely.

Nikki: Yeah. When you’re CNC-ing things, it’s really important to think about material waste.

Do you guys have your own CNC machine?

Sam: No, talking about the dream of where we’d like to go… Just us, in a room, with our CNC machine, playing around all day!

Nikki: That would be pretty great.

What advice do you have for someone setting out on this crazy path?

Sam: You just have to do it, and you can’t be afraid to go in debt in the beginning.

Nikki: And you have to allow yourself to mess up a lot. You’re going to make mistakes, and you have to deal with it and keep making decisions and keep moving. Even in this new economy.

That’s the interesting thing about this economy. Nobody knows how to deal with it. We’re all kind of in the same boat, even the big guys.

Nikki: I always like to think that in a recession, there’s a certain amount of ingenuity and resourcefulness that can come from it. That could be a great thing.